IF there’s one athlete who is well-equipped to deal with the uncertainty and challenges thrown up by coronavirus, it’s Sarah Adlington.

The 34-year-old has been a regular on the international judo scene for well over a decade and during that time, has seen both the extreme highs as well as the real lows elite sport can throw up.

Winning Commonwealth Games gold on home soil at Glasgow 2014 was undoubtedly a highlight but missing out on qualification for both the London 2012 and the Rio 2016 Olympics by a mere whisker were disappointments which were not easy to overcome. Add to that a number of serious and potentially career-threatening injuries and it is safe to say the Scot has been through the mill throughout the course of her career.

However, Adlington is nothing if not resilient. The heavyweight may have been knocked down numerous times but on each and every occasion, she has got back up to fight another day.

At the turn of 2020, it seemed Adlington was on track to finally fulfill her life-long ambition of becoming an Olympian. She was in a strong position to secure a qualification spot for Team GB for Tokyo 2020 but, as is all too familiar to the Edinburgh-based judoka, a spanner was to be thrown into the works.

Having had an almost entirely injury-free Olympic cycle, when competing at the end of last year, Adlington tore her ACL. While far from ideal, she still believed she had plenty of time to make sure she would be on the plane to Tokyo. However, at an event in Paris in February, Adlington tore her hamstring in two places, with this injury’s timing bringing far more anxiety but despite this, it appeared Adlington was on the verge of making her first Olympic team.

However, the pandemic then hit and so going from the high of contemplating going to he first Olympic Games to coming to terms with the postponement of Tokyo 2020 was not, admits Adlington, easy.

“With what’s happened with me having disappointments throughout my career, I started doubting everything,” she said.

“During lockdown, I’d have low days and I’d go over my career and think back to times I’d missed out - in 2018, I missed a World Championship bronze medal in golden score which is the closest you can get to a medal and so there’s things like that you think my career would look so different if I’d won that medal.

“I was looking back thinking ‘if only’ about different results. Sport at this level comes down to such tiny margins.

“But then I realised that actually, it doesn’t all come down to medals – it’s about the journey. So I had dark days but I’m lucky that I have good people around me who I can pick up the phone to who help get me out of that.”

It wasn’t long before Adlington realised lockdown presented her with a real opportunity to get herself into shape ahead of the judo calendar restarting. And after scrambling together some gym equipment – she got the watt bike while her fellow GB team-mate, Sally Conway, got the rowing machine – Adlington threw herself into her training. And come the end of the summer, the Scot was in excellent shape.

She was all set to test herself at the European Championships in the Czech Republic a few weeks ago but British Judo ended up making a late call to withdraw the entire British team on safety grounds which although disappointing for Adlington, was not unexpected.

“I’ve not done a lot of judo over lockdown so it would have been good to go to the Europeans to see where I am,” she said.

“But I’d been watching the news and so to be honest, I never fully expected we would be there. Yes it was disappointing because I’m probably in the best shape of my life but it was a totally understandable decision.”

Adlington admits she is now at an age where she has contemplated life without elite-level sport. With lockdown giving her so much time to think, she admits a million thoughts about her future have swirled around her head, giving her plenty of opportunity to think about life as a whole and the sacrifices she has made to get to this point.

“Yes you have to give things up but I wouldn’t call them sacrifices,” she said.

“I’m 34 and so by now, there’s expectations to have your own house and as a woman, there’s certain expectations around that too with things like children so I’m so conflicted by everything.

“I’m lucky I’ve got people around me who I can talk all of this through with because that’s been one of the most difficult parts of this, there’s been so much time to think.

“What’s been good about this period though is there’s nothing dragging me down because you’re away from all of that outside noise.”

All going well, Adlington will be back competing in the new year and will cement her place in the team for Tokyo. And that will, she admits, make all the challenges and the tough times worth it.

“If everything works out well and I end up on that plane to Tokyo, what more can you ask?,” she said.

“And if I can get there being the best version of myself then that would be amazing. If I do make it to Tokyo, it will have been one hell of a journey.”